The Internet Is For Porn

I watch porn now and again. For obvious reasons, I don’t bring it up often in conversation. For starters, it’s rare to have the opportunity to discuss the comedic merits of Evan Stone, the greatest pirate hunter in the world, around the water cooler at work. For another, it’s one of those things that people often find disconcerting in a woman. Either I’m trying too hard to appear cool and sexually liberated or I’m single-handedly (no pun intended) destroying the feminist movement. I could write a whole essay on the subjugation of women in the porn industry or how sexual freedom has become somehow culturally synonymous with being open-minded, but it’s been done before and likely better than I could do it justice. I get both arguments, but personal-is-political aside, I feel like what happens between me and Tube8 in the privacy of my own home isn’t really the concern of lecherous dudes or Catharine MacKinnon, so aside from the obvious irony of writing a blog post about it, I don’t so much mention it.

That said, I have to speak up and talk about certain persistent problems I’ve seen that need to be addressed.

Bad dialogue. I know, I know. Saying you like porn but hate the cheesy dialogue is like saying that you love the Mona Lisa but you think she could stand to wipe the smug look off her face. I’m not making a complete blanket statement here. If the pizza guy knocks on the door during a game of truth-or-dare at the cheerleader camp sleepover, you would be simply disappointed if said delivery did not somehow offer meaty sausage. This guy works customer service and will never get an opportunity like this again, let’s cut him a little slack. Between So Terrible It’s Actually Amazing and Huh, This Is Actually Decent, there’s a bleak no-man’s-land where someone thinks it’s actually acceptable to say the words “hot snatch”. Unless you’ve just stolen some baked goods fresh out of the oven, no. Just no.

Ugly sets. Pool? Fine. Office? Fine. Generic but otherwise inoffensive bedroom? Fine. Futon with wood paneling in the background? Not fine. Some guy’s garage? Not even allowed within 100 yards of fine. Hang a drape, use some cushions, invest in some lighting. No, a guy holding an Itty Bitty Book Light just off-camera is not lighting, I don’t care if he is union.

Long fingernails. I guess I should be up-front and say that this is something that skeeves me out in general. I appreciate a pretty French manicure as much as the next girl, but I cannot and will not accept talons near the gentle areas. Actually, this leads me to my next point.

Misuse of the clitoris. For those of you just joining us in ninth-grade biology, the clitoris is a bundle of nerves at the crest of the labia that has roughly 8000 nerve endings. To put that in perspective, that is twice the amount of nerve endings contained in the head of the penis. It is sensitive. It is like a landmine whose mother you just insulted. Every woman is different in how she prefers hers to be treated (though I’ve heard “to the left a little bit” is usually a good bet), but I can tell you right now that it does not like to be poked at like you’re testing it for signs of life. You’re not sending an angry text to an ex-boyfriend. A genie is not going to come out. You do not pull back the hood and go to work like you’re fixing the transmission, you approach that bitch with respect or you risk getting kicked in the face, so you step lively and ask firmly but politely how its day was.

Wardrobe. I accept that a certain amount of rayon is inevitable. I get that all schoolgirl uniforms are going to look like they came straight from class at St. Bambi’s Whore Academy. I will immediately turn off any clip that shows a man naked except for his socks. I have to have some standards here.

It’s not all bad. Some people obviously have had the same thoughts I’ve had and have set out to make the wide world of erotica a better place. I can appreciate that there are varying tastes in the world. I just don’t like wading through a sea of dreadful XXX’s in search of a decent O.

I just choked on my ginger ale. I can’t say as I’ve ever asked if I was being weatherproofed, but a few times I’ve wondered if I was being spot-treated, or perhaps used as practice for the most inelegant pie-eating contest ever.